Exploring the Nth Room: South Korea’s worst case of digital sexual exploitation

By the end of August 2024, social media has been bombarded with information about “humiliation rooms” in South Korea. In these Telegram chatrooms, female colleagues, sisters, mothers, and intimate partners have been subjected to deep fake pornography.

Content warning for discussion of sexual abuse and the exploitation of minors.

This isn’t the first time South Korea has had a similar case where women have been sexually exploited through a network of chatrooms. Journalist Kim Wan from South Korea uncovered a case about a child pornography distribution network from an anonymous tip. Shortly after investigating the case, Kim’s personal information was leaked to the group chat participants. Kim and his family were threatened, but he decided to investigate further about what is now known as the Nth Room case.

What is the Nth Room?

The Nth Room is a network of group chats where girls and women were forced into sexual slavery. Moon Hyung-wook (alias: god god) created the first Nth Room and has methodically enslaved girls and women. To do this, Moon hacked his target’s social media accounts.

Moon would resort to psychologically exploiting these victims with the information he had on them. He would then coerce these victims to perform sexual acts in front of their cameras. This explicit material filmed by Moon would be leveraged against the victim, thus “enslaving” the victims to Moon.

In just one of Moon’s Nth rooms, at least 3,000 of explicit material was uploaded. In addition to this, Moon was less interested in the profit made from exploiting these women. Moon simply enjoyed torturing these women, but nevertheless, Moon’s ‘the Gotham Room’ collected 10,000 won (roughly $7) per entry. There are at least 21 known victims of Moon, many of them minors at the time of the crime.

The Doctor’s Room

Moon is not the only ringleader of the Nth Rooms. Cho Jubin (alias the Doctor) turned the Nth Room into a twisted business venture. He charged one million won and upwards to 1.5 million won (above $1000) for entry to his VIP rooms. In fact, he once proudly claimed that he made ‘two slaves a day.’ Unlike Moon, Cho lured victims by promising them opportunities to earn money. He would demand photos from them, but when they refused, Cho would start threatening the victims. He would humiliate these victims by manipulating them to film explicit material.

The sexual crimes transcended the confines of Telegram, and several of Cho’s victims were arranged to be gang raped by other members of the group chat. Additionally, the ‘slave’ victims of Cho would force his victims to carve ‘slave’ or ‘doctor’ into their skin to brand them. The exploitation became both mental and physical at this point. Torture involving forced incest, human excrement, insects, and sharp objects was common in the Doctor’s Room.

Unsurprisingly, the Doctor’s Room by Cho was known to be the most sadistic among these chat rooms. Note that 16 out of 74 of Cho’s victims are minors. Women who were not directly coerced are not safe either. These Nth Room chats were also known to distribute revenge porn material. There were 260,000 active participants in Cho’s Nth room chats.

What happened to the perpetrators?

South Korea’s privacy laws prevent the release of the perpetrator’s identities. Due to the severity of the case and the outrage of South Koreans, the faces of Cho Jubin and Moon Hyung-wook were revealed to the public.

Cho Jubin has been sentenced to 42 years in prison. Moon Hyung-wook on the other hand, was sentenced to 34 years in prison with 30 years of electronic ankle. The South Korean government intends to compensate the victims financially with treatment, education, and living expenses.

Although the main perpetrators have been caught, many of the participants are still walking free. Despite this shocking controversy, no new laws or policies have been passed to strengthen the protection of minors and women in online spaces. Journalists in South Korea still remain unsafe when they report about sexual crimes, as is with the case of the Burning Sun scandal.

With the case of the second Nth Room taking social media by storm, South Korea’s government should be urged to take the issue with the utmost urgency.